Hold Me Now - Feel and Touch in an Unreal World

10, 17, and 31 January; 7, 14, and 21 February; and on 7, and 14 March

Starting time: 13:30

Conference and Rietveld Uncut at Stedelijk Museum:

21, 22, 23, 24 March

This Studium Generale is about the sense of touch in artistic, philosophical and political terms. It wants to conceive how the haptic – i.e., relating to or based on the sense of touch – is thought and experienced in life, art, design and theory.

Touch is of vital importance to our emotional and neurobiological development. So how do we feel and touch in our technologically mediated dematerialized digital cultures? Do we solely stroke and swipe our screens? How is the body and its feel involved? Are we in fact cultivating different tactilities in relation to the world and others? Further, how can we trace the ways in which touch informs and reforms the body in concepts such as violence, gender, sexuality, democracy and identity? If art and design have privileged sight and sound, should touch – and all the senses – be addressed and activated in order to help us stay ‘in touch’ with our bodies and the material world?